Espio Joins the Mario & Sonic Olympic 2020 Games – New Screenshots

SEGA has revealed four new sporting events that will feature in the upcoming Mario & Sonic at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, and one of them will include a brand new guest character. You’ll know him from such games as Knuckles’ Chaotix and Sonic Heroes – that’s right, the purple chameleon spy Espio is back!

The Espio screenshots come courtesy of Famitsu, who reported on the new events that will appear in the game (SEGA managed to distribute press versions of the others, which we have mirrored here). Espio will be a ‘guest character’ in the newly-revealed Triple Jump, which appears to be a Quick Time Event-based minigame where a good rhythm gets you further ahead. I suppose that’s true in life, as well as sports.

As you can see, it looks like each character will have some form of special move that can be activated during an event. Espio’s is clearly visible in the screenshot above, but in other Triple Jump screenshots we can see Shadow having a proper rage moment. Hopefully it’s not a Chaos Blast or something.

Here are the other events that were revealed.

Disc Throw: Using a combination of Left Stick twiddling and timely button presses, you must get your chosen character to chuck a heavy disc as far as possible. Screenshots for this event both display a left analogue stick and an entire Nintendo Switch in terms of how you play. Getting the angle right is just as important as putting a lot of power in, so make sure you’re paying attention to both gauges.

Gymnastics: Ah, beautiful Luigi. So majestic in his splendour. Wait, this is a Sonic fansite. Erm… Yeah, with gymnastics you essentially have to score as many points as possible by doing fantastically elegant jumps and spins. Make sure you follow the commands correctly though, because your performance means nothing if you can’t land it!

Badminton: Look, it’s better than tennis but nobody wants to admit it. Badminton is a mean, tough, expressive sport, where players must bang a shuttlecock around a court for as long as possible without it touching the ground. Whoever fails to return the shuttlecock to their opponent’s side loses the point. We imagine the controls here would be similar to that of tennis… only better. It’s just that nobody wants to admit it.

Looking good, eh? You can catch all of the updates on the official Mario & Sonic at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games website. But we’ve got a gallery full of images from all four of the above events sitting here for you to look over. Take a peek!